


hope is all we have

by falloutmars



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Forbidden Love, like actually forbidden and illegal and stuff, spoiler but theres kissing, talks of love and moving forward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27089590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falloutmars/pseuds/falloutmars
Summary: “It feels right, doesn’t it?” she whispers in his ear. “You feel it too?”She’s standing in the space between his legs as she kisses him. His lips, his cheek, his jaw, she kisses wherever she can reach. Her hands find their way to his shirt buttons, shaking slightly as they undo the very top one. It’s the closest she’s ever been to anyone else, the most intimate, and the most wrong.Because it is wrong. She knows it, he knows it, the whole world knows it.–or, in a world where love is forbidden, why does it feel so right?
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 18
Kudos: 40
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	hope is all we have

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is a badly edited fic with bad tags and a bad summary but i actually kind of like this so i hope you enjoy it at least a little bit

“It feels right, doesn’t it?” she whispers in his ear. “You feel it too?” 

She’s standing in the space between his legs as she kisses him. His lips, his cheek, his jaw, she kisses wherever she can reach. Her hands find their way to his shirt buttons, shaking slightly as they undo the very top one. It’s the closest she’s ever been to anyone else, the most intimate, and the most wrong.

Because it is wrong. She knows it, he knows it, the whole world knows it. 

But then why does it feel so right?

He closes his eyes and mutters, “I don’t know.” With a deep breath, he brings his hand up to cup her cheek and opens his eyes again, looking directly into hers. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me to stop,” she says weakly.

He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

She undoes another button. 

“Betty–”

Pressing her lips to his, she imagines it to be the last time. He’s going to tell her to stop, she just knows it. No matter how right it may feel, it’s wrong. Nothing will take that away. But as his lips move against her, she thinks nothing may ever feel this right ever again. 

Then he pulls back. 

His eyes are watering, intensely focused on hers, and his bottom lip is quivering as he holds it between his teeth. One hand is firmly planted on her face, the other fiddling with the hem of her top, shaking. 

“Tell me to stop,” she repeats, stronger this time. “Tell me to stop and I will.”

He shakes his head again, momentarily closing his eyes. “No.”

Her hand cups his cheek, pushing slightly to force his eyes towards her. “Jughead, look at me.” He does. “Say the words.”

He swallows thickly. She can tell how difficult he’s finding this, and in truth, so is she. She doesn’t want to force him into this, yet she doesn’t want to stop either. If she stops, she’ll have to walk away. And walking away may mean never seeing him ever again. The thought terrifies her. 

Tears start falling from her eyes. “Jug, say something,” she pleads. “Anything.”

Ever so slowly, he moves in towards her until their lips tentatively meet. It’s the first time he’s initiated a kiss between them and it sparks something in her she never wants to get rid of. His kiss is softer, less experimental than hers. At first, she just wanted to feel something, right or wrong. Then, she followed her instincts. Now, there’s something deeper than that. His kiss means something. 

He pulls away just enough for their lips not to be touching. “Don’t stop,” he whispers, barely loud enough for her to hear. She feels the movement, though, how his lips move to make up the words she’s been so desperate to hear. 

When she opens her eyes, his are still closed as if he’s lost in the moment. A moment she doesn’t want to break or change or ruin. So she lets her eyes flutter shut and closes the very small gap between them. She tries to convey everything in a single kiss, just like he did. 

_I’m scared_ , she’s telling him, _I’m scared but I want this, and I want you. I don’t know what it means but I want to find out together._

“Betty,” he says when they part and for a moment she thinks she’s been wrong about it all. “Betty,” he repeats, “what does this mean?”

She sighs as he drops his hand from her face and takes a step back. There are mere inches between them but he’s never felt so far away. It seems like a poignant move, like he wants that distance between them. Just the thought throws a bucket of dread over her. She’s going to lose him, she convinces herself of it. This is it, this is it forever. 

“I don’t know,” she finally says, trying not to let her true feelings show. Not that she’s fully sure what she’s feeling. Heartbreak, maybe, even if that could be too dramatic. 

“Me neither.”

Her heart drops. She can’t form any words, she realizes, without them coming out with a sob, so she just nods, tearing her eyes away from him. Maybe walking away is the best decision, the best option. Maybe never seeing him again is what it’ll take for her to go back to normal. 

“But,” he says so quietly she’s not sure she’s meant to hear it, “you’re right.”

“What?” Her eyes snap to his. They’re glistening even in the low light of this tiny room they found themselves in and they’re… beautiful. Just like him, she thinks before wondering if that’s a thought she should be suppressing too. 

“You’re right,” he repeats, slowly holding his hand out. “It feels right.”

She looks down at his extended hand. It’s an offering of some kind, she decides. And after just a second of hesitation, she takes it. It’s warm, especially compared to hers, and it’s soft and she never wants to let go. If things were different, she’d hold onto it, onto him, forever. 

He takes a step forward again. It seems like another pointed move, like he’s trying to tell her something without words. Even more so when he leans down to kiss her once more, their hands still clasped together. 

“What does it mean?” she asks. “You asked me, but what do you think?”

He laughs softly. “I wish I knew.”

Disappointed, she nods. She gets it, though, she wishes she knew, too. “Will we ever know?”

With a small shrug, he squeezes her hand, using the other to guide her gaze towards him, the feeling of his hand on her face almost too much. “What I do know is… I want to kiss you. Again and again.”

She smiles at that. “Me too.”

“Among other things,” he finishes.

“Yeah,” she laughs, “me too.”

He takes another step forward, ignoring that there’s little room for him to move forward. “Can I?” he whispers in her ear. “Can I kiss you again, Betty?”

She swallows down her lingering nerves, her lingering worries, and nods. 

So he does. His lips connect with hers in a more forceful kiss than before, one that tells her of his intent. With their hands still connected between them, he uses the other to hold the base of her head, his fingers pushing through her hair. It gives him a way to pull her forward to deepen the kiss, while she uses her spare hand to tug on the collar of his shirt. 

She’s breathless within mere minutes yet fear runs through her veins. What they’re doing is wrong, but somehow that only serves to urge her on further. There’s something about it being wrong, something that makes her want it, want him, even more.

“Jug,” she pants, “Jug, what are we doing?”

He presses another kiss to her lips, a chaste one this time. “Kissing?” he says with an attempted air of humor that falls flat. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

At first, she felt so… confident. Confident with what they were doing, confident with her decision, confident that they could face anything. Now that’s all drained away. Now she’s terrified. Now she wonders if one more kiss could be the last, if it could be what ends it all.

“I’m so scared,” she whispers, her voice shaky. “I want this, Jug, I really do, but–”

“The dreaded but,” he interrupts.

She nods, dragging her eyes away from him. “But it’s wrong?” It comes out more as a question that she means, as if she’s questioning the truth of it. Is it wrong? Is it really wrong? To her, it isn’t. To her, it’s the easier, most right thing in the world. Does that matter, though? 

“Yeah.” He pauses, readjusting his grip on her hand. “I… Nevermind.”

“No, tell me.”

“I like you, Betty,” he says after a deep breath.

She can’t stop the smile that spreads across her face. For a second, she imagines him saying those three words in different circumstances, in a different world. _I like you_ , he’d say, _I like you and I want to be with you._

Here, now, it’s followed by, “I don’t know what it means, but I do.”

And her smile drops slightly. Only slightly because he does. Despite everything, he likes her. 

“I guess that’s the problem,” she replies, shrugging. “But I like you, too. Whatever it means.”

He ducks his head, eyes fixated on their joined hands. “So what do we do?” 

And there is the question she had been dreading. 

What do they do? In a world where the only thing that has ever felt right to her is in reality very wrong, what do you do? She wants to say fuck it, we’ll risk it all. Despite what it could mean for them, she wants to do it. Except, deep down, she knows she can’t, that they can’t.

She swallows thickly. “I don’t know.”

That’s all she feels like she can say. _I don’t know._ Because it’s the truth and it’s the only truth she can give him. She wishes she could make up something that would make him feel better, and her, too. A fairytale ending where they both live happily ever after and everything is fine. 

They don’t live in a fairytale, though. This world, the one that’s telling them this is _wrong_ , is not a fairytale. And she doesn’t think a fairytale is possible. It’s difficult to be optimistic in this world, so no matter how much she tries, she cannot convince herself that this will be okay. She just doesn’t believe it.

So all she can do is tell him the truth. 

Two truths: _I like you_ and _I don’t know what the hell we do now._

As much as she wishes she could protect his feelings, and hers, she knows he’s not naive enough to believe different to her. The world is against them. The whole damn world is telling them it’s wrong. Two people cannot change the view of the whole world, no matter how hard they try.

“It’s illegal, Betty.” He pushes a strand of hair out of her face. “If we get found out…”

“We’ll get sent away,” she finishes for him. 

With a bitter laugh, he says, “What does that even mean? ‘Sent away’? I’ve read countless articles on it, but no one seems to know what happens.”

“I’m not sure we want to know, Jug.”

He hesitates for a moment before he shakes his head. “No, you’re right.” 

“What?”

He sighs. “Is there an easy way around this?”

The desperation and sadness in his voice make her want to cry. She doesn’t know what to do, she doesn’t know what the answer is. How fucking difficult is it to know what to do?

She wraps her arms around him, pulling him as close as humanly possible. His body is warm against hers and she can’t stop her mind from wandering. It makes her feel… broken. Broken yet as if he could put every single piece of her back together again. 

_I’m sorry_ , she wants to tell him. But it seems so trivial. I’m sorry. Is that it? Sorry doesn’t matter, sorry doesn’t change the world around them, sorry won’t make everything okay. So she just holds him tighter. She feels him relax in her arms as a quiet sob comes out. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers, ignoring that it isn’t. He knows it, she knows it, they’re just words of attempted comfort. Her hand rubs his back in a soothing pattern, too, in the hope of something, anything, making him feel better.

When he doesn’t make any effort to pull away, she lets her own tears fall onto the material of his plaid shirt. She just lets it out, lets out the pain she’s feeling in the form of tears. It doesn’t help, but it’s better than nothing.

They stay like that for some time, crying into each others’ arms. There’s a mutual understanding between them, some of the words left unsaid yet everything known. It’s cathartic in a way, crying with someone who understands so deeply, but it’s heartbreaking. This is Jughead, this is Jughead who she _likes_ in a way she’s never liked anyone before, and seeing him so upset, so candidly upset… Well, someone might as well have ripped her heart out and thrown it off a fifteen-story building. 

Once she’s certain his sobs have subsided, she loosens her grip and untangles him from her arms. Wanting to keep some physical contact between them, she threads their fingers together with one hand, the other gently cupping the underside of his jaw.

“Are you okay?” she asks, even though she already knows the answer. 

He just shrugs, so she takes that as an _I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it._

Giving in to her instincts, she leans forward to kiss him. She uses the hand on his face to pull him down towards her, letting her lips brush over his. It’s only a short kiss. She doesn’t want to pressure him or upset him further, so she doesn’t fully give in to what she wants. Instead, she hopes it comes across as caring, loving even.

Her hand trails down the front of his shirt as she pulls away, letting it fall until she can grab his other hand, threading her fingers through his so both of their hands are intertwined.

“You know, I used to read forbidden love stories,” she tells him with a slight smile, “When I was younger, before… everything.”

He nods but doesn’t interrupt her.

“I thought, I don’t know, maybe I was naive. But I remember thinking, how can you make something like that illegal? I came from a house of love, Jug. My parents… sure, they fought, but they loved each other. I was so used to love that when they made it illegal it felt so, so wrong.” She pauses. “I think I was in the minority.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “My parents weren’t around at all. My mom left when I was 3, so I don’t remember her at all. And my dad, well, he was too busy drinking to realize he had a son. I never thought love was normal, so the law didn’t surprise me.” He sighs, ducking his head. “I never thought I was capable of love, Betty.”

“What changed?”

He looks up at her and squeezes her hands. “You came along.”

Tears pool in her eyes and she fights the urge to crash their lips together and never part. They’re words she’s been dying to hear for so long, but she never realized how much she wanted to hear them from Jughead until he said them. She can almost feel pieces of her sticking back together already, no matter how dramatic that sounds. 

“Jug…”

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to.”

“What if I want to?”

He smiles at that, but his smile quickly falls. “It’s still illegal.”

“Yeah. But Jughead, I don’t want to let this go.”

“I never thought I’d get it, you know? When I said to you that I didn’t know what it meant, I wasn’t lying. Because I don’t, but I feel it.”

She nods in agreement. “And I don’t know what it means in terms of–” she gestures vaguely with their joined hands “–the world.”

“Do you think it’ll ever change?”

She lets out a breathy laugh. “That’s a heavy question.”

“Sorry,” he mutters.

Thinking for a moment, she averts her gaze from him. He’s distracting, to say the least, so she focuses on a smudged spot on the wall instead.

On one hand, she does not think the world can change. Even when she remembers before so fondly, so clearly, she doesn’t believe that there will be a time like that ever again. They thought love was toxic, that it was ruining the world. Love meant distraction; distraction meant lessened productivity. That in itself was enough for them to change the law. 

For Betty, though, she saw first hand what love could be like. As rare as it might’ve been, it was there between her parents. And it worked. Despite what everyone else thought, it could work. Up until they both passed, just a few months before the law change, she believed in it. And the stories she used to read, they always made it work. She grew up believing.

But she wasn’t sure she still did. Until Jughead.

When he said things changed when she came along, she felt it, too. 

“Honestly, I don’t know,” she answers after a moment. “But I hope it will. _You_ make me hope it will.”

“I guess that’s all we have,” he says almost sadly.

“What?”

“Hope.”

“Is it enough?”

The smile he gives her is filled with melancholy, despair, uncertainty. “I don’t know.”

She nods. It’s not what she wanted to hear, but once again, it’s the truth. The truth surrounding them seems to be packed full of _I don’t know’_ s. Maybe that’s just the way it is, the way it has to be. They can’t change the truth, but what they can do is face it. And they can face it together.

Letting go of one of his hands, she gives in to the urge to touch his face again. A gentle touch, a touch that could get them found out, but one that serves to ground her. She looks directly into his eyes, into his beautiful blue-green eyes, and tells him her truth. 

“I think hope is enough. I think the hope _you_ make me feel is enough. It might not fix anything, but you make me want to try. And while we definitely don’t know if it will ever truly work, if it’ll ever be enough, you’re worth whatever it takes.”

She watches as his eyes water and the tears begin to fall. She swipes her thumb over his cheek to catch them, wiping them away as if they were never there, and she wishes it was just a question of wiping away this barrier in front of them. It isn’t, it won’t be, but she’s willing to give everything she’s got, only if he is, too.

Before responding with words, he brings his hand up to the back of her neck, allowing the short distance between them to be closed. She can taste the saltiness of his tears on his lips as he pushes her towards him as if he never wants to let go. Part of her hopes that he never will, that he lets her continue kissing him instead of hearing the words that could break them, the reality that could diminish her hopes. 

Of course, that can’t happen. The reality of the world comes crashing back down when he pulls back with a deep sigh just a few moments later. 

“I tried to tell myself you weren’t worth it,” he says, making no effort to move his hand from her neck. “I tried to convince myself that this wasn’t real, that I was imagining it. I’m a Jones–” he lets out a bitter laugh “–we don’t _love_. But… every single time I saw you, something in my head tried to tell me something different. At first, I didn’t know what it was–”

“You’d never felt it before?” she interrupts, whispering. 

He shakes his head. “Remember that day, the day you first kissed me?”

Yeah. Of course she did. She was so fucking nervous. It wasn’t planned, but seeing him every day got the better of her. The way they just _got on_ within seconds of meeting, what eventually became of the lingering eye contact, the accidental touches. Hell, he’s her co-worker, they work together on the same project every single fucking day. Just them, no one else. They formed a connection she’s never had before, and it was easy, it was so damn easy to fall for him. 

Their boss had put them on design and edit together that week. Why it was a two-person job, she had no idea, but she sure as hell wasn’t complaining. Maybe it was because they’d become a pair. You’d never ask for Cooper without Jones, that was just the way it was.

Looking back, she should’ve known then.

It was another boring Wednesday. Boring in terms of work, not in terms of being with Jughead. That was never boring. She was designing the latest online paper cover, while he was editing the front piece. They’d help each other out when necessary, so when she asked his advice on the placement of the title, nothing was out of the ordinary. But when he came up behind her, leaning over her shoulder to look at the computer screen, she could feel his breath on her neck, she could almost feel the way his lips moved as he spoke, and right then, she decided she wanted nothing more than to kiss him.

They had to work late to finish, only them left in the building, and that’s when she did it. In their darkened private office, no cameras, no people, she just… leaned over and pressed her lips to his. 

His reaction was the best she could’ve hoped for, to be honest. It could’ve ended in her being sent away if he were so inclined, but he wasn’t. Not that she ever really doubted that. He kissed her back, albeit tentatively, letting his hand creep up to rest on her shoulder. And when he did, her borderline overwhelming nerves began seeping away.

With a fond smile, she nods. “Yeah. How could I forget?”

A smile flashes on his face, but it fades as quickly as it appears. “Before then, I’d been feeling something. I put it down to, I don’t know, stress. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to kiss you until then.”

“I’d wanted to do it for ages, but I was so scared,” she tells him honestly. “It could’ve gone so wrong, but I took that leap because I knew you’d be worth it.”

“I’m so glad you did,” he says, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “You’re so beautiful.”

She blushes despite herself. “How are we here, Jug?”

“I don’t know,” he sighs. “But you made me feel this, Betty, _you_ taught me how to love. I can’t give that up.”

She feels an overwhelming adoration for him. Love. The single feeling she’s had to unlearn yet never succeeded at, the feeling _she_ taught _him_ , the one she helped him learn from the ground up. 

“Then we won’t.”

His lips quirk into a smile. “We won’t?”

She shakes her head. “Can I kiss you again?”

“Yes,” he says before leaning forward and connecting their lips.

They kiss for some time, ignoring the uncertainty surrounding them. The push and pull of their lips distracting them from the real world. That seems to be the norm or something that could become the norm. Distracted by each other means they don’t have to think about their harsh reality. 

Feeling him smile into the kiss is the greatest distraction of them all.

But distractions don’t last forever, no matter how much either of them wants them to. They have to pull apart for air eventually, and looking into his eyes after that kiss brings her back down to Earth. 

“What now?” she asks, wishing it wasn’t something she had to say. Before she says it, she knows what it could do, the impact of such words. But she also knows the impact of secrets – secrets from others and secrets from yourself. 

He takes a tentative step back, ensuring their hands are still intertwined. “I’m guessing saying ‘I don’t know’ is out of the question?”

She laughs lightly. “We may need a proper plan if we’re doing this.” She pauses and tilts her head to the side with a frown. “We are doing this, right?”

“We’re doing this,” he says with a squeeze of her hand. “We’re doing this together.”

**Author's Note:**

> okay so a note about this fic: i wrote it with the full intention of extending it past this scene but then i lost inspiration so i'm saying i *might* come back to it at some point. also it's badly edited but uh that's fine.
> 
> anyway! i hope you actually enjoyed it. thank you for reading my mess of words. if you so desire let me know what you think and if you'd like to read more one day. 
> 
> thank you!!


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